


Alarm Clocks Aren't Sharkbait

by Mur



Category: Free!
Genre: Childhood, Drabble Series, Friendship, Gen, Growing Up, M/M, Slice of Life, eventual rinharu, mermaid au, merman Rin
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-04 14:08:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1781848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mur/pseuds/Mur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eight year-old Haruka Nanase helps a strange, wounded shark, he gains a reluctant friend. Too bad he has a serious attitude problem, and Haru isn't even sure that he's not imaginary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

A boy, barely eight years old, lay on his back in the sand.

The sun was warm, and the sand was warmer, but not hot enough to burn his skin. His toes were buried in the sand, Haruka Nanase had just awakened from a nap.

 _I'm probably sunburned,_  he thought, forcing himself to open his eyes, shielding them from the brightness of the sun with one hand. He didn't fully recall falling asleep there in the first place, but he assumed it was just the sound of the waves again. The sound of the ocean calmed his nerves and could always lull him into a light sleep, no matter where he was. It was almost like a tuneless, wordless, lullaby to him.

He flicked a few stray black hairs out of his eyes and stood up, brushing off the layer of sand stuck to his arms and the backs of his legs. The sound of the waves crashing against the shore was duller than it had been earlier. The tide had gone out, but he could still hear loud, irregular splashing. No one seemed to be around, so he straightened his shirt and shorts, kicked off his sandals, and followed the sounds down the beach.

The splashing led him to a rocky outcrop a ways down the beach that jutted out into the ocean. Much of it was normally submerged, but since the tide had gone out, the rocks lay drying in the sun, creating a series of tidepools that dotted the landscape before leading out into the ocean.

There, caught in a tidepool, was the biggest fish Haruka had ever seen. That was, if it could even really be called a fish. It looked more like a shark than anything else. It had a powerful-looking tail, coated with silver, rubbery flesh, accented by dull red stripes and splotches of darker grey that faded to a lighter grey, almost white along the bottom. Further up, the skin seemed to dot into scales and freckles along skin that resembled human flesh. Actually, the torso seemed almost entirely human, save the dark red stripes and dorsal fin on the back. In fact, the top half, at the very least, resembled a young boy. He had jagged red hair, sharp features, and serrated teeth. His shoulders looked powerful, more muscular than Haruka's at the very least. His clawed hands were scraping helplessly against a rock, his knuckles white, but their lower portions connected by what looked like a dark pinkish webbing. It was hard for him to observe all of this, however, as the creature was throwing himself against a boulder on the oceanside of the tidepool, smacking his tail repeatedly against the water, as though the force of it would propel him over the obstacle, pulling himself out of what was now serving as his rocky prison.

The small boy said nothing at first, taking a few steps closer to get a better view of the fish? boy? What was he? Haru crouched low amongst the rocks, but his shifting knocked a few tiny pebbles into the water by accident, and the creature froze, tensing up instinctively.

He whipped his head around, his eyes (which were a vibrant red that matched his hair), boring directly into Haruka. Haruka froze as well, more startled than afraid. The creature pressed himself further up against the rock, the sea moss on it now torn and barren from the constant onslaught of scratching beneath his claws. His tail hung in the water, and now that he wasn't splashing and thrashing, churning the water white, the reason he was caught in this predicament was evident enough.

Around his fin, stretching from his dorsal to the left side of his tailfin, was a plastic wrapper. Haruka almost instantly recognized it as one of those massive, thick ones they used for shipping; the kind he knew from how it always wrapped up those cases of waterbottles that his mother bought for "hurricane emergencies." The plastic was being pulled taut by the minutely rough texture of his skin, and it had dug so deeply into his tailfin that the area around it looked greened and infected. Beneath it, the skin was red and raw, most likely because he had been scraping at it with his claws for some time, digging it in in further rather than freeing himself.

"You're hurt," Haru breathed, and the creature hissed at him in response, flailing the injured appendage again as the boy reached out a hand, taking a step down from the rock. It splashed him, hard, but he merely wiped his soaked hair from his eyes, holding both of his hands up to show he meant no harm. "Hey, I'm gonna get you free, okay? You're never gonna be able to get over those rocks and back into the ocean unless I help you." He kept his voice low and soft, flinching when the creature hissed at him again.

He climbed down into the water, and placed a hand on the injured tailfin gingerly. "If you can understand me," he whispered. "But try not to wiggle too much." It probaby couldn't. Why would a fish understand a person? Let alone Japanese? It probably had its own fishy language, or something. Too bad he didn't know how to speak fish.

When his fingers tightened around the plastic, the shark let out a shrill screech, an unearthly, high-pitched sound like nothing Haruka had ever heard before. It lurched away from him, twisting in one motion, pulling his tail back, and raked his claws across Haruka's arm. He didn't let go of the plastic, however, and fell facefirst into the water.

When he pulled himself back up to a sitting position, Haru was still submerged up to his shoulders, but held his grip firm. He shook his head to get his hair out of his eyes again, sending water droplets flying, and the shark seemed to relax slightly, watching him with distant curiously. It took some pulling and stretching at the plastic, but eventually the boy managed to free him from his translucent prison, throwing the litter out of the tidepool and onto the beach. He'd get it later and throw it in the trash properly, (but did that stuff go to a dump that emptied back into the ocean anyway? He wasn't sure, but if it did, that'd be pretty redundant, he thought.) but for now, he was more focused on helping this strange shark-person.

He knelt down and held a hand out to the creature, who swiped at him again. Haru pulled back in time this time, but still didn't show any evidence of being afraid. If anything, he was more excited, despite the fact that the shark was hissing at him. Who knew sharks hissed? Huh. If he had teeth like that, he'd probably hiss too, though. So, he decided not to judge. Still, he wasn't going to let him die here. Instead, he grabbed him by the shoulder, wrapping his arms around it, pulling him up out of the water onto the rock. It was...harder than he expected. The shark was heavy, heavier than he was, and he groaned with the effort. Once he managed to pull him over the rock, he couldn't keep his grip on him any longer, partially due to the fact that he was thrashing and squirming beneath his grip. As it thrashed, it kept hissing and spraying water everywhere, even hitting Haruka in the legs with its fins. The barrage threatened to knock him over, but luckily he was already about to let go, just when he thought he was losing his grip on the rock. He released him, his arms giving out, and he toppled into the deeper water on the other side of the rock alongside the shark. By deeper, it was just slightly deeper than his waist, but he lay there, floating on his back for a few seconds to catch his breath.

Beside him, the shark smacked the water a couple of times with his tail, before rolling over in the water so only the dorsal fin on his back broke the surface of the water. He shot another glance at Haru through the water, and briefly their eyes met, locked upon one another; and in another flick of a tailfin, he was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

The following day, Haruka returned to the same spot.

Actually, he came to this spot nearly every day. He kicked off his sandals and discarded his shirt, just as he always did, to go for a swim in the surf.

He had grown up on this island, and was accustomed to swimming in the otherwise brutal surf. The island was a popular destination for surfers and tourists alike to catch larger waves, but Haruka had always preferred swimming. He dove down beneath the surface, swimming out towards the boat buoy. The view underwater was always murky at best due to the amount of broken-down shells and sand the waves picked up, but he didn't mind. He had trained himself to roll with the currents and kick hard enough to avoid a riptide, a skill he rarely commended himself for, mostly because he always strove to be better at swimming, and one could never be a supreme swimmer until they had mastered all of the capabilities of a dolphin or a fish. He chuckled inwardly at the thought. That shark-boy was probably pretty good at swimming, when his tailfin wasn't torn up like that.

Once he reached the boat buoy, he rolled over, kicking off of it with his feet, and swam back to shore. As he emerged from the surf, he was completely unaware of the pair of eyes watching him, the figure almost completely submerged in the water as it drew closer to shore. Haru lifted his still-sandy shirt and shook it out, then toweled off his dripping-wet hair with it. Out of the corner of his eye, he could have sworn he saw a flash of silver, and heard a splash behind him. He turned, his face still a picture of calm.

"Oh, you're back," he commented, as if being followed by a shark-person was a normal thing that happened to swimmers every day. Well, maybe someplace where sharkbites were common, like New Smyrna beach, the sharkbite capital of the world, but as far as he was aware, the rates on their island were fairly low. Still, he wondered in the back of his mind if he had reason to be alarmed. After all, wasn't this a merperson or something? Didn't mermaids drown sailors and such? Good thing he was a swimmer, instead of a sailor. Still, he might as well ask. "Did you follow me back because you want to eat me or something? Because I saw you, now I'm not allowed to live?" He paused. "I hope your tail is feeling better. I know I'd be really upset if my foot was hurt the way your tail was."

The shark swam a little closer, but still refused to lift his head fully out of the water, and remained silent.

The boy paced back to the water's edge, locking eyes with him. Deep blue met firey red, and they stood there, the remains of waves that had broken far out to sea lapping against his head, and coming to rest around Haruka's ankles. They were silent, staring at one another for what felt like an eternity, before Haru finally opened his mouth again. He was certain that the other could understand him now. His eyes were intelligent, maybe even moreso than his own. "What's your name?" he asked.

The shark lifted his head, his face still contorted into that scowl he had plastered across it the previous day. Maybe it was stuck that way. Maybe it was what he had heard his mother call 'bitchy resting face.' Maybe he actually was just pissed off all the time. It could also be somewhere in the middle, for all he knew. He opened his mouth, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth. His voice was scratchy, cold, but also sounded like waves crashing against the shore. "Rin."

Rin? That didn't sound too terribly exotic. But, at the same time, it amused Haruka. Another boy with a girly name. Then again, maybe shark-people were just like that and they were all girly or something. This was the first shark-person he had seen, though, so his frame of reference was a bit too tiny to actually figure such things out for himself.

"So you can understand me."

"Duh."

"You're not going to eat me, are you?"

Rin hissed at him again, shaking his head. "Of course not. You look gross."

Haru shrugged. "I wouldn't want to eat you, either. You look too much like a person."

"I'm a shark, not a person." He grumped in retort, brushing a few wet hairs that had clumped together on his face out of the way. "You swim pretty well for a landfish. I thought you were a dolphin, but I guess you're just a landfish."

"I'm not a landfish, I'm a person," Haru retorted, crossing his arms.

"Okay, landfish. What do you want from me? You keep watching me like that, and it's weird." he bit his lip, sinking back into the water a bit, letting it wash over the gills on his sides and smaller auxilliary ones along his neck. He could breate in the open air perfectly fine, but the water was just so much nicer.

Haru remained silent for a few seconds, blinking at him. "Why do you ask?"

Rin clicked his tongue against his teeth, crossing his arms. "Usually, if someone, _even a stupid landfish_ ," he grumbled under his breath, "saves one of us, we usually spare their lives in exchange for the life debt, but I didn't really want to eat you or drown you in the first place."

Haru glanced down at the bandage on his arm, which concealed the bright red claw gashes from the previous day. He had passed them off to his mother as scratches from falling on sharp rocks, but even that had sounded a little far-fetched to him. Then again, the truth was much stranger and more far-fetched anyway. "Can I ask for something later? I don't really want anything that I can think of." It was true. All he really wanted was to swim, and maybe to learn a bit more about his new "friend," if he could be called a friend, but maybe holding onto the favor seemed a little rude. Conversely, he figured that Rin would eventually forget about the whole thing anyway. He was fine with that, but he definitely wanted to see him again.

It was then that an idea began to form in his mind. Perhaps if he asked for some time, and then asked again, and again, it would be easy enough to goad the shark into showing up day after day.

Well, maybe.

Maybe not, but it was worth a try, wasn't it? "I mean, I'll think about it, and then I can tell you what I want tomorrow."

Rin paused, then nodded slowly. "Maybe. Maybe I'll come back."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and all of the kudos! I really wasn't expecting this little bit to get much attention. As long as I stay a few "chapters" ahead, I'll keep updating regularly.


	3. Chapter 3

The sun was still low on the horizon when Haruka returned to the shore the following morning. He stood barefoot in the surf, waves lapping against his ankles. The foam and spray dampened his shorts with each wave that broke against the shore. He found it comforting, though most children would whine that they were sandy and probably too cold to swim.

Good thing he wasn't 'most children.'

He curled his toes against the borken shells and tiny pebbles that surrounded his feet in the surf, clutching a small, round fishbowl to his chest as he waded out to where the water was deep enough that it was up to his waist. (Granted, he wasn't very tall, so it was probably only about three quarters of a meter deep.) The bowl in question contained a few pebbles, decorative shells, and a single, pitiful-looking carnival goldfish. It meandered about in the tiny bowl, and the boy glanced down to watch it for a moment.

As the next wave came in, he tipped the vessel over, abruptly emptying its contents into the surf. The tiny fish flopped about in the powerful draw of the wave for a few moments, disoriented by the sudden and constant barrage of current and pebbles. Haru watched it, fascinated.

He didn't even notice the shadow in the water approach until it was nearly within an arm's reach of him, and the tiny fish was devoured by a set of powerful jaws, lined with two rows of razor-sharp serrated teeth. It was swallowed whole.

"Rin. That was mean. I was setting him free."

The shark raised his head out of the water and shook it, throwing a spray of water droplets across Haru's shirt. "Was it? Tastes like frash water anyway, it probably woudn't last too long anyways.Good thing I was here to make the poor thing's death quick and painless."

If Haruka had been better at showing emotions, he probably would have pouted, but he just shook his head. "I let him go, because he was probably a person like you."

"I already told you, I'm not a person, I'm a shark," Rin snapped in response.

"You said that yesterday."

"Did I? I don't remember. The fish I just ate is affecting me. I don't remember anymore." He feigned dismay, mock-falling over into the surf.

"Why would you forget something like that?" Haru asked, blinking. The joke had gone completely over his head.

"You know, because tiny fish have tiny memories."

No response.

"I was joking." Rin finally explained, sighing a little. "Tiny fish don't remember much. I just ate a tiny fish. Get it...? You don't get it, nevermind."

Haru was silent for a few more moments, and the shark slowly lifted his head out of the water again. His eyes were big and round, observant more than his usual state of mild ire. He swam around him, but Haru seemed to be watching something in the water.

Well, correction. He was watching the water. It was mesmerizing for him to watch the waves rolling in, but he had been listening to Rin the entire time. He listened to him, and his words sounded so much like the waves. He liked it. He liked Rin, he decided it then an there. Haru's world wasn't black and white, but he liked to sort things into categories. Mostly things that were important to him, and things that were unimportant. There were also things that he had to and did not have to pay attention to, which didn't always coincide with the things that were or weren't important at any given time. Things like school and chores fell into the "must pay attention, but not really important" category, but anything relating to water or swimming always seemed to come first for him. It wasn't even something to be measured on that kind of scale.

He didn't really have any reason for it, but that was just the sort of person he decided to be. He liked to decide things for himself. He was pleased with himself for deciding he liked Rin. He didn't want to make his "wish" and let Rin leave. He was selfish like that.

Heh. _Selfish. Fish._ How fitting.

"So you did come back."

Rin started, surprised to hear Haru finally speak once more. "I'm back because you told me to come back," he answered.

Of course. The exchange. Or whatever. It was almost like a wish, wasn't it? Then again, he had doubts that rin had magic of any sort. And, if he did have magic, Haru doubted that Rin would use it on him. There were probably all sorts or rules and laws or whatever about that stuff, anyways. It was beginning to dawn on him now just how little he knew about Rin. Was Rin even real? It was sort of comedic, but he didn't even have any evidence that the shark was real in the first place. He remembered being told to "watch out for sharks," but he was under the impression that sharks were big fish, not people.

Furthermore, if he went home and told his mother that he had met a shark, he was certain that she would never let him go to the beach alone again. He would never be able to bear that. Above all else, Haru loved swimming. It definitely fell into the "very important" and also the "pay attention to this," categories. Swimming in pools, in ponds, in the ocean, even in puddles. He was obsessed with the water. Not oly did he love swimming, but somthing about Rin had captivated him. Maybe it was his eyes, maybe it was that smirk of his. Maybe it was the way he seemed to cut through the water like he was gliding. It stirred something inside Haruka, awakening a primal need for the water. Maybe. Maybe he was just going crazy.

What he did know was that he needed to see Rin again, even if he let him go again this time. He needed to learn more about him.

It was the sort of thing he'd go home and continue to think about. His body would be in a chair at the kitchen table, or sitting on his bed, or in the bathtub, or laying in bed, but his mind would be on the beach. His mind would be wading into the waves, no matter the time of day, ducking beneath the surface, going far beyond anywhere he could reach by swimming alone. The depths were cold at night, but during the day, the sun filtered down to create shapes and patterns that danced along the sand. It was huge, it was an abyss, and it stretched on forever. It was calling him. 

Was that weird? It was kind of weird. Then again, he probably _was_  weird. File that fact under "unimportant," and "I'm going to choose not to pay attention to this."

He didn't have many friends, partially due to the fact that he was so quiet. He didn't particularly intend to be, but he never really had much to say. Most people didn't really interest him, either. He was grateful for Makoto, though he rarely knew how to show it, and his friend Nagisa as well. Makoto had been his best friend since, well, forever, and was probably the only person in the world who could draw him out of his metaphorical shell.

Maybe Makoto would know what to do.


	4. Chapter 4

"This is boring." Haru was sitting on a stool in Makoto's kitchen, kicking his feet absently. Spread out on the table was a stack of books Makoto had borrowed from the library, with titles like "Sharks of the World," "Sharks: Creatures of the Deep," "Shark Facts," and "Sharks!". Haru liked that one. He picked it out because it had an exclaimation point in the title. Exclaimation points were important.

"Nuh-uh, this is scientific." Makoto corrected, flipping a page in the big book that had NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC OCEANS printed across the cover in big white letters. He didn't know half of the words in it, but he had already decided that he was definitely learnng a lot. His siblings wouldn't be back from their after-school hike for awhile, so they knew they weren't in the way by usurping the entire table for the time being.

"Scientific, or whatever. Let's just go swimming and find the shark again." Haru commented, pushing one of the volumes aside. Did Makoto even know half of the words in that book? He was dismissing Haru, and they both knew it, but he was right. Haru was looking for excuses to go swimming. When wasn't he? The thing here was, that he wasn't sure how to explain Rin to Makoto without saying "I met a boy who is a fish." Though his explanation had basically boiled down to that. He had never been particularly verbose.

"Wow, did you know, that sharks have like, an endless supply of teeth? Yeah, if they bite into something and lose one, another one sorta pulls forward and takes its place. Some sharks can have like, two...um. four zeroes...twenty thousand teeth before they die!" Makoto was totally engrossed in the book, but Haru just found himself sighing, flipping another page idly. On that page was a photo of a Tiger Shark. Yeah, it looked sort of like Rin. Sort of. It had a lot less...person to it, but maybe Rin was related to it? Or something like that. Wait. That could be fish-racist. He shouldn't assume that all fish that look similar are related. Yeah. Fish-racist. Fishist? That's a stupid word.

He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts as though they were extra droplets of water that made his hair stick to his face. Anyway, the page called the shark in question a Tiger Shark. Named for the stripes that mostly appear on juveniles, they are only second to great whites in terms of human-related shark attacks. In fact, they will eat almost anything.

He smiled to himself, (almost morbidly) thinking of how Rin had gobbled up his mother's ex-pet. He still had to come up with a good excuse for that one. He was bad at excuses. They always came out along the lines of 'Oh, I was shaving the eel,' or 'I had to go eat some shampoo.' Yeah, he had to work on that.

The book continued on about how tiger sharks have been found with all sorts of things in their stomach, from alarm clocks and seat cushions to a whole severed human arm (which had been cut off of the person before the shark ate it, somehow. Haru found this mental image more comedic than horrifying). Though they mostly ate fish and stingrays. He made a mental note to ask Rin later what he liked to eat. Maybe he'd bring him something. If it wasn't something ridiculous, like stingray or alarm clock.

Still, all of that information, and it didn't say anything about them being people, or talking, or getting caught in tidepools. The goldfish-eating was kind of explained, at least. He let out an audible sigh. "Can't we just go looking for him?"

"I'd rather look at pictures of sharks in books. Your shark sounds okay, but-"

Haru popped his head over the top of Makoto's book, propping himself up on the table by his hands. "But what?"

"But! He's in the ocean!"

"So?"

There was silence for a few moments. Of course. Makoto was afraid of the ocean. Haru was always so picky about his words, but at the same time, he had a habit of being dreadfully blunt. One would think that quiet children were more tactful, but for Haruka, it was more along the lines of the fact that perhaps he had just never practiced with human interaction well enough to pick up on the subtleties, or lackthereof, that affected the emotions of others. Actually, it was probably none of these things. He was just tactless. Finally, he opened his mouth again. "We'll go find him."

Makoto retorted by slamming his hands down on the table hard enough to knock the stack of books over. "I'm never going in the ocean! You can't make me!" he yelled. The outburst hadn't been totally unwarranted, but it did feel a little uncharacteristic. After all, Makoto was usually the calm one, always smiles and reassurance that they could do whatever they wanted, go wherever they wanted, grow up to be whatever they wanted to be. Or something else inspriational that may as well have been out of a cheap American fortune cookie. Makoto was a master of another kind of zen, but he was also still a kid. A kid whose nerve had just been struck, and ultimate fear disregarded by someone he cared about.

Haru slowly lowered himself, realizing what he had just done. He hadn't meant to upset Makoto, but he just did. Good job there dropping the ball on one of the only people in the world that he had filed into his "important" category. Way to be mean about it, too.

Makoto's feelings were _way_  more important than being fishist.

**Author's Note:**

> While I do have a plan for an overall progression of this story, it's more of a collection of drabbles than a cohesive fic. That aside, I do plan to update regularly.
> 
> Thank you for reading!


End file.
